Javan went to legoland with mom mom....loads of fun if legos are your thing.

Javan was watching a movie on the computer and cosette wanted to see to!! Lol

Sleeping on mom mom..
***squish***

My first time to the park. It was 70 degrees today so we just couldn't resist!!

This is the day that we were getting discharged.

Cosette loves her sister!

So the much anticipated weight check was scheduled right before her 2am feeding. I requested that she be weighed before the 11am feeding just to gauge what we are looking at here.

She was down 8 grams.

Do you know how small 8 grams is...I didn't either...the nurse told me its about a tsp.

And you know they are strict enough here to let that keep us here.

I cried and fed and cried some more.

I noticed her security band had fallen off. I wonder how much that weighs...

Then I went to "sleep". Not really...I couldn't sleep.

The nurse came and took her 10 min ago.... I am waiting.... Praying....

And the verdict is......

She was up by 9 grams!!!!!

WE ARE GOING HOME!!!!!

that may or may not have to so with that little extra breastmilk I gave her 15 min before the nurse came in.

I promise I am an honest person...desperate times.....

Fattening up baby

Lance and I had a good time trying to think of ways to fatten her up for her big weigh in tomorrow. Lol

The test

Yesterday I was just too emotional to update. They said she wasn't ready to have her feeding tube removed.

They had all different reasons that I don't even feel like writing about even now. It seemed as though every person I talked to had a different reason for why violet was not ready to go home.

I spent so much of the day crying, tired, overwhelmed and missing my family ...

Today I had enough. I wanted to go home. End of story. Violet is fine and they can't keep us here.

Well it didn't go over as well as I had hoped. The doc said I needed to show she can gain weight off of the feeding tube.

And IF she gains then we can go home....tomorrow

I literally started bawling right in front of the doctor.

Eh well life is full of compromise,right? What's one more day when I've already spent a week.

Praying she gains weight today.

Surprise!

I came back for her 11am feeding and this is what I find.

No iv
No bilirubin lights
No bed warmer

Just my little sweetie all bathed and dressed ready to eat!

Now I just have to keep working on milk supply.

This morning they weighed her before and after feedings and found out she was getting 40ml-ish from me plus I pump about 20ml afterwards.

Of course today they upped the requirement to 60ml. Oi

Still, hopefully I can get my supply up quickly and get the heck outta here. I'm hoping for today but probably not until tomorrow.

I've been putting fennel oil on my skin and last night my good friend brought over some fennelgeek and rose hip herbs that all help increase milk supply.

I slept and slept between each feeding last night and was finally able to hold down a sandwich.

This morning I felt like a normal person (for the most part) and had a great breakfast.

Things are looking up!!!

Making progress!!

This morning miss Violet got her oxygen tube removed. That red mark on her temple is from the sticker that held it on.

And it was STICKY!!

We have lowered the dose from "d12" to "d10". We have also lowered the rate from 17 to 10 ml/hour.

the orange tube in her nose is her feeding tube. She is now up to 1.5 oz and tolerating it well.

Now the only thing left (aside from continuing to lower dose and kick that jaundice) is that I need to be able to pump 1.5 oz AFTER I nurse her. I guess their way of ensuring she is getting enough milk from me when we leave. That is about 45ml and I am pumping about 22ml.

Again another silly protocol but we are so ready to get out of here I don't care what I have to do.

It also didn't help that due to lack of sleep I just felt awful today. I slept all day in between feedings which comes to sleeping in about 2 hour stretches.

I also didn't eat lunch or dinner. Lack of sleep+lack of food=decrease milk supply.

Now that I am feeling like I can tolerate food, I plan on eating and getting some good sleep and GETTING OUTTA HERE!!

Sunbathing

Here is a pic of her under the bilirubin lights. She has to wear a mask to protect her eyes. You can see the oxygen tube in her nose. The 3 round stickers on her chest are connected to the monitor that watch her heart rate and breathing rate. The gold sticker is connected to the heat lamp. The thing on her foot monitors her oxygen level and the bandage in her arm is connected to the iv.

A little excessive...I know

the whole story...

Ok I am sitting in my new "home" for the weekend. I have been getting so many questions about how Violet is doing and how was the birth and why is she still in nicu.

And ive been kind of ignoring everyone.

 Please don't take it personally.

The nicu is an interesting place. You are only allowed 2 people in at a time (one being the parent) No cell phones (although I break that rule all of the time) and no kids. It doesn't make it easy to chat it up and keep peeps up to speed.

It makes me so sad that Javan hasn't met his new sister yet.

I love my fancy phone but writing back to everyone's questions is time consuming.

So is trying to write a blog update which is why it has taken until now to do it. Please forgive the many typos. I'm tired and my phone thinks its smart and likes to change some words I type to the wrong words.

My hope is if i can get a good update on here then it will be easy to give little updates to everyone all at once.

Ok...so..

Monday night I woke up with some pretty intense contractions. They were painful enough to wonder if I was in labor but an hour apart which of course ruled out that possibility.

Tuesday Lance had taken off of work to take Javan to a field trip for me. I had also scheduled an ultrasound that morning. Of course, of all the days Lance was really feeling under the weather on Tuesday.  on top of that ... I was having more and more of these painful contractions. Nothing consistant enough to think it was labor but definitely painful enough.

The ultrasound came back fine and we all went home and took a nap (except for Javan who delighted to get extra computer time).

At noon, lance and javan went on their field trip to tour the chiefs stadium and I stayed home with Cosette. That was when I started to speculate that maybe this is a little more than just braxton Hix but real labor.

Let's just say.. Having contractions every few min and entertaining a 1 year old is NOT easy.

At about 4pm lance came home and I had already called the midwife, amber, with an update and request that she stop by to check me.

Sure enough I was dialated 4-5 and was at the beginning stages of labor.

We sent amber home so she could get changed and eat some dinner while I labored for a bit and ate some dinner as well.

I'm not quite sure at what time it was that amber came back...maybe 6?? But she checked me again and I was dialated to about an 8 so we decided to head the hospital.

From there I can't really tell you how things went exactly...I was a little busy. Lol but I do know it was around 9pm that the doctor broke my water and Violet was born at 9:20.

She had really low blood sugars and they let me breastfeed for a few min but decided just to take her to the nicu and give her sugar water via iv.

Why low blood sugars? Well its common in big babies and diabetics. Basically she was getting too much sugar from me so her pancreas was producing insulin. Which worked out great in the womb but in the real world she didn't need that much....but her body wouldn't stop producing the extra insulin.

So the doctor basically is giving her extra sugar until her body could regulate itself. And this worked out fine over night on Tuesday and most of Wednesday.

But at some point on Wednesday her body decided to produce MORE insulin to cover the extra sugar she was getting. So they had to add MORE sugar to her iv.

And this would have probably worked out fine except that over night on Wednesday she started to do this extra rapid breathing. This is somewhat common in babies as a natural way to work out any extra fluid from birth...or extra fluid from the iv.....

So now she had to wear an oxygen tube (that's my really technical medical term lol).

The extra heavy breathing is the reason the nurses decided on Thursday that I could not hold or nurse her...which made for a very unhappy mamma.

On top if that her bilirubin bloodwork showed she was a bit jaundice and haveshe had to wear goggles and lay under a special light. Jaundice is a fairly common condition with babies. I have my theories about it and have good reason to believe she never would have gotten it if we had gone home right away BUT I don't feel like getting into yet another one of my theories...at any rate...its the easiest thing to solve with simply laying under the light.

Things started looking better on Friday when they decided that we can start lowering the dose of the sugar water as soon as my milk comes in.

So I started pumping like a crazy lady and rubbing fennel oil on me and eating it.

By Saturday morning my milk had come in and by Saturday evening they had lowered the dose of the sugar in her iv.

And that is where we are at now. Midnight on Saturday evening Im sitting here listening to her suck her pacifier while they pump my breastmilk in her stomach. Its about as backwards as it gets but that's basically what the medical community has become....so wrapped up in "protocol" that common sense is completely forgotten. Ah well..at this point lance and I will do whatever it takes to get our little girl home.

Violet Dawn 9lb 3oz